Fire fighting personnel are frequently involved in suppressing a fire in the engine compartment of a motor vehicle. To reach the source of the fire it is necessary to raise and then maintain the hood of the vehicle in a raised position so that water or other fire suppressing material may be directed into the engine compartment. The heat typically present in an engine compartment fire will frequently disable any spring designed to maintain the hood in the raised position. It has been my experience that once the hood falls it is next to impossible to reach, release the catch and re-raise the hood. By the same token manipulating a hinged hood supporting rod, present in some vehicles, may be dangerous or impossible because of the heat in the compartment.
To insure that a vehicle hood, once raised, remains elevated it has been customary for one fighting an engine compartment fire to procure an axe from the fire engine and prop it between the hood and an underlying part of the vehicle frame structure. This procedure however poses some risk since one or both hands must be at least momentarily exposed to the compartment heat.
There is a need for a device which will effectively support a vehicle hood at a desired height or elevation which is immune to the engine compartment heat and can be manipulated with one hand outside of the engine compartment.
In addition, there is a need for a simple and relatively inexpensive device to support other structures in a selected elevated position during the course of fighting a fire in a building.
One such need involves supporting a garage door. It not unusual for those involved in extinguishing a fire in a residential dwelling to enter the dwelling through the garage. To do so the garage door, whether of the swinging or roll-up door type, must be opened. A change in the fire's direction may force the fire crew to exit the premises in a hurry, normally via their entry point, i.e., the garage. This exit will no longer be available if heat of the fire has disabled the springs allowing the door(s) to close thus trapping the fire fighters.
This phenomenon is not hypothetical. More than one casualty based on this unfortunate chain of events has been noted by The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Various types of adjustable length devices for supporting objects, such as tents, construction materials, etc., in elevated positions are known in the art. For example, adjustable length telescoping members in which a pin, pivotally mounted on or slidably positioned in an outer tube, engages a selected hole on an inner tube to adjust the height of the top of the inner tube are known. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,468,484; 7,097,380; 1,591,110; 2,222,018; 3,229,940; 2006/0062632; 6,347,777; and 6,551,226. However, none of these devices are designed to overcome the above problems faced by fire fighting crews. For example, to use such a telescoping tube arrangement to raise a vehicle hood one would have to insert the top of the inner tube under the hood then grasp the inner tube, probably repeatedly, to raise it within the outer tube to achieve the desired height. The tubes would then have to be locked through the use of a pin, for example, together. This procedure would not only be time consuming, but would expose at least one and probably both of the user's hands to the compartment heat and perhaps fire.
There is a need for a simple adjustable height telescopic support bar which eliminates the need for a user to manually grasp the inner member to adjust the height and in particular for such a device that can be rapidly operated with one hand located outside of the compartment.